Tester and Senate Energy and Natural Resources chairman Jeff Bingman asked the Department of Agriculture's inspector general to review Plum Creek's private negotiations with the U.S. Forest Service on the future use of timberland roads.
In a letter sent Friday, the two senators said the decision could have nationwide impact.
Plum Creek claims full-use rights to 1,100 miles of “cost-share” roads it built in cooperation with the Forest Service to log those lands. Those roads connect with another 900 miles of road on Forest Service public land, much of it checkerboarded ownership.
For the past two years, Plum Creek and Forest Service officials have been working on an agreement declaring the roads originally built to remove timber could now be used for any purpose the company wants, including access roads for new homes in the woods.
“(W)e are deeply concerned that implementation of the proposed amendment could lead to major land use changes with major environmental impacts on the national forests, may put public safety at risk, and could increase costs for the government and its taxpayers,” the senators wrote.
Plum Creek spokeswoman Kathy Budinick said 48 percent of those roads are in a proposed Legacy Project that would place development restrictions on 312,500 acres of the 1.2 million acres the company owns in Montana. Plum Creek has sold or developed about 200,000 acres of its property in the past five years, and expects to sell or develop a similar amount in the next five, Budinick said.
On Oct. 10, the federal General Accounting Office released a preliminary review of the Plum Creek plan, questioning the legality of the new road use. In their letter, Tester and Bingman asked Agriculture Inspector General Phyllis Fong to do a full investigation of the proposal.
“For the last two years the Forest Service was in negotiations nobody knew about and then they come up with this agreement,” Tester said Friday. “If this is a good agreement, that meets the scrutiny of the OIG (Office of Inspector General) and the American people, then there isn't any pressure to get this done tomorrow or a month or three months. We've seen what happens when you get government that's non-transparent and does things in a rush. Good things don't happen that way.”
Budinick said on Friday she'd seen the senators' letter.
“We recognize the process is taking some additional time and may take some more additional time,” Budinick said. “We're willing to proceed with that process.”
Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at rchaney@missoulian.com.
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comeonfolks wrote on Nov 21, 2008 11:06 PM:
You wanna solve the wage problem, it's simple, let the employee base dwindle to half of it's current size thru simple attrition then double the wages, and do it for the most deserving - those at the bottom.
If the president was captured by aliens tomorrow, I dare say the U wouldn't miss a beat or even know he was gone and that goes for 1/2 the staff up there. The students would all still get the exact same education, the grass would grow and the sun would shine.
Remember, Abraham Lincoln only had a few months of class in a 1 teacher school house. Now we need 20 years in class, advanced degrees, a staff and faculty of 1000s, vast campus, computers and networks, football teams, a statdium even the ancient Romans would envy and a bloated bureaucracy with a budget larger than most 3rd world countries; and all that just to get someone enough education to manage a shoe store. Come on folks...who are we kiddin' here. "